Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Succinct’s SP1 ZKVM has come under scrutiny after <a href="https://lambdaclass.com/">LambdaClass</a> disclosed a critical <a href="https://blog.lambdaclass.com/responsible-disclosure-of-an-exploit-in-succincts-sp1-zkvm-found-in-partnership-with-3mi-labs-and-aligned-which-arises-from-the-interaction-of-two-distinct-security-vulnerabilities/">security vulnerability</a> in its proof generation. The exploit in version 3 of SP1, discovered in collaboration with 3Mi Labs and Aligned, stemmed from the interaction of two separate security flaws.



Succinct previously disclosed the potential exploit to its customers <a href="https://github.com/succinctlabs/sp1/security/advisories/GHSA-c873-wfhp-wx5m">via Github</a> and Telegram.



Here’s what happened in simple terms:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Missing Verification Step — The system relied on a list to track key proof components but didn’t properly verify that the list was accurate. Consequently, a malicious prover could potentially manipulate it to produce invalid proofs. New checks were added to fix the oversight.</li>



<li>Incomplete Proof Flag — A key part of SP1’s proof-checking system included a flag meant to confirm that a proof was fully executed. However, this flag wasn’t always properly enforced, leading to a potential loophole. Succinct tightened up the checks.</li>



<li>Polynomial Evaluation Issue — An issue found in Plonky3 (a dependency of SP1), meant that it didn’t fully verify all calculations before confirming a proof was valid. Post-patch, all proof components are properly verified.</li>
</ol>



While the vulnerability was quickly addressed prior to the disclosure, the process has raised concerns about transparency in security practices for zero-knowledge virtual machines (ZKVMs). SP1’s technology is currently underpinning high profile upgrades in rollup infrastructure under development.



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Mantle Network has integrated SP1 to transition into a zero-knowledge (ZK) validity rollup, aiming to enhance transaction finality times and support institutional-grade asset settlements.</li>



<li>The AggLayer employs SP1 to generate pessimistic proofs, ensuring the security of its cross-chain interoperability solutions.</li>



<li>Taiko has adopted SP1 as a ZK prover to secure its layer-2 execution, which uses a multi-prover system</li>



<li>Soon, a relatively new project, is building an SVM rollup framework that settles to Ethereum with ZK fault proofs powered by SP1, similar to Eclipse, although the latter uses RISC Zero instead.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transparency and implications</h2>



LambdaClass cautioned that the full implications of the flaw required further assessment. Notably, the exploit depended on the interplay between the two issues, meaning that fixing one might not be sufficient to prevent exploitation.



LambdaClass developer known as Fede, <a href="https://x.com/fede_intern/status/1883688063936692355">highlighted</a> on social media that his team felt compelled to make the disclosure public after perceiving a lack of urgency in Succinct’s communication about the issue.



Succinct’s leadership acted responsibly in fixing the issue, according to Avail’s Anurag Arjun, but he agreed&nbsp; better public disclosure practices are needed.



“ZKVM systems are very new and are constantly being updated, so you’d expect vulnerabilities,” Arjun told Blockworks. “In an open-source setting, anyone can run the prover, and if vulnerabilities aren’t disclosed properly, that’s definitely a risk.”



The Avail team, which uses SP1 for proof generation in its consensus mechanism, was informed about the issue privately ahead of public disclosure, Arjun confirmed.



Avail’s implementation was not exposed to risk, Arjun said, because they rely on Succinct’s proprietary prover, which remains permissioned. Avail’s rollup clients have also not yet begun using its SP1-powered bridge contract, so there was no practical impact.



Meanwhile, defenders of Succinct point out that responsible disclosure typically involves private reporting before public statements to avoid unnecessary panic and potential exploitation.



Succinct’s updated version 4 of SP1 — dubbed Turbo — resolves the identified vulnerability, and downstream projects have begun integrating these fixes.&nbsp;



The case illustrates how even well-audited code can and does contain bugs. As Succinct <a href="https://x.com/SuccinctLabs/status/1884083149136863656">put it</a>, “while auditors provide valuable insights, they are not infallible, and we remain committed to continuously improving and working hard to ensure our systems are safe and secure for everyone.”



The more explicit, if belated transparency from Succinct drew <a href="https://x.com/arik_g/status/1884084728783069206">praise</a>. What remains is the question of how to best balance security, transparency, and user protection. And finding <a href="https://x.com/dimahledba/status/1884199665035280586">the line between</a> due criticism and toxic infighting.



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Succinct’s SP1 bug sparks transparency debate in ZK security

A vulnerability in inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol that was patched in April reared its bugly head on the Terra blockchain, late Tuesday.



Onchain data <a href="https://x.com/Rarma_/status/1818477986569765308">showed</a> an erroneous minting of 58 million ASTRO tokens — worth about $2.7 million —&nbsp;and about $4.1 million in USDC, USDT and wrapped BTC.



Terra conducted an emergency chain upgrade to prevent the vulnerability from affecting other tokens, according to a <a href="https://x.com/terra_money/status/1818498438759411964">post</a> on X. The current Terra is the fork that arose following the collapse of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ust">UST</a> stablecoin on what’s now known as the Terra Classic blockchain.



ASTRO is the governance token of Astroport, a decentralized exchange launched in late 2021 on Terra Classic.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/terra">Terra/Luna</a> implosion in May 2022 forced many projects, including Astroport, to rethink their strategies. Astroport pivoted towards a multichain strategy with its primary hub on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/neutron">Neutron</a>, a smart contract blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK.



Swift maneuvers from the Astroport team have reportedly contained the damage from the IBC bug exploit.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ibc-close-call-with-critical-vulnerability">IBC had a close call with a critical vulnerability</a>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">🚨 ATTENTION 🚨 A short update on the recent events: &#8211; The attackers&#39; <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24ASTRO&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$ASTRO</a> on Neutron have been seized and is being held in the Astroport Treasury &#8211; The attackers&#39; Terra address has been blacklisted from making any transactions &#8211; The IBC Hook vulnerability has been patched -…&mdash; Astroport ✦ (@astroport_fi) <a href="https://twitter.com/astroport_fi/status/1818663685704892511?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Astroport co-lead Donovan Solms <a href="https://x.com/donovansolms/status/1818755367209246756">commented</a>, “Today was the toughest day&nbsp;[Astroport] has had since the collapse of Terra in &#8217;22. And for a second time, it was due to circumstances outside of our control and our contracts remain unaffected.”



Blockworks requested comments from representatives of Terraform Labs and Neutron.



Terra responded with a <a href="https://x.com/terra_money/status/1819032544274194885">statement</a> that &#8220;a detailed breakdown of events&#8221; would be forthcoming.



It’s not immediately clear how the bug, which was discovered and fixed in April, was able to return.



Zaki Manian, co-founder of Sommelier, reported that a June upgrade “accidentally” reintroduced the vulnerability.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Terra was part of the original vulnerability coordination but they accidentally reverted the patch in the June upgrade <a href="https://t.co/0BHB5kCQwZ">https://t.co/0BHB5kCQwZ</a>&mdash; Zaki ⚛️🍷 (@zmanian) <a href="https://twitter.com/zmanian/status/1818506615001358801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Terra was running on their own fork of IBC software, outside the main Cosmos Github repository, which did not contain the fix, Manian told Blockworks.



Running a private version of IBC puts the onus on the team to be responsible for maintaining it and keeping critical bugs out.



“When you have a team that becomes a skeleton crew, this decision that they made to be on a fork had an enormous cost,” Manian said.



One measure which could have mitigated the risk in this case is the use of IBC rate limits, an idea which has many proponents, particularly on chains with DeFi applications.



“There is very little reason why Terra needed to be able to move $3 million in one day,” Manian said. “A significant fraction of all their [total value locked], so IBC rate limits might have made a big difference.”



Gabriel Shapiro, the general counsel at Delphi Labs, who has closely followed the legal issues facing Terraform Labs (TFL) and its co-founder Do Kwon, <a href="https://x.com/lex_node/status/1818488028916039875">suggested</a> the legal case brought by the SEC against TFL, may have indirectly caused the oversight.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/terraform-agrees-to-pay-proposed-judgment-sec">Terraform agrees to pay nearly $4.5B in proposed judgment with SEC</a>



Delphi Labs co-founder José Macedo claims to have strong evidence of the attacker’s identity.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Have mounting evidence pointing to the identity of the Terra hacker If you&#39;re reading this, come forward to negotiate return of funds in exchange for a bug bounty Otherwise, will be forced to go public with what we have and bring in law enforcement. Don&#39;t ruin your life over…&mdash; José Maria Macedo (@ZeMariaMacedo) <a href="https://twitter.com/ZeMariaMacedo/status/1818644442036732298?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The ASTRO token fell by more than -70% following the incident and is currently down about -35% on the day.



Updated July 31, 2024 at 6:09 pm ET with additional context. Updated Aug 1, 2024 at 12:27 pm ET with Terra statement.



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Patched IBC bug strikes Terra chain

Bessie Liu

A recent blog <a href="https://www.asymmetric.re/blog/cosmos-ibc-reentrancy-infinite-mint">post</a> by Asymmetric Research revealed there was a critical vulnerability that affected the inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol — a standard that enables interaction among individual cosmos chains.



This vulnerability was found specifically in ibc-go, the Golang high-level programming language implementation of the IBC protocol, and affected CosmWasm-based IBC middleware.&nbsp;



IBC middleware was created to enable the integration of ICS20 with other IBC protocols. Similar to many bridging protocols, the middleware enables packets to be sent from one blockchain to another. These packets are stored as commitments before being properly received and deleted. If they are not received, tokens will be refunded through a timeout functionality.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/picasso-connects-ethereum-to-cosmos-ibc">Picasso connects Ethereum to Cosmos IBC</a>



Asymmetric Research found that the flow between the module deleting the commitment control could be replayed, which meant it was possible to replay the bug and exploit an infinite number of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ibc">IBC</a> tokens.&nbsp;



Multiple chains were vulnerable to the issue, with Osmosis, one of the largest cross-chain DEXs in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cosmos">Cosmos</a> ecosystem, being the largest chain that could have been affected. However, due to rate limiting on the chain, the damage the bug could have potentially caused was limited.&nbsp;



According to Asymmetric Research, the vulnerability has been privately disclosed to the Cosmos HackerOne bug bounty program, and the issue itself has been resolved without any malicious exploitation.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-hackers-bug-bounties">Helpful hackers net more than $640k in 1 year with crypto bug bounties</a>



“This issue demonstrates how easy it is to break trust assumptions and introduce new vulnerabilities by adding new features and functionality. It is also another example of the importance of defense-in-depth,” Asymmetric Research <a href="https://www.asymmetric.re/blog/cosmos-ibc-reentrancy-infinite-mint">wrote</a> in a blog post.



The research noted specifically that Cosmos teams had strong security measures in place that could have saved them from existential risks. 



“A binary patch was released to fix the underlying IBC timeout reentrancy without breaking consensus. Contributors spent much time and effort assessing the security implications of the mentioned issues,” Asymmetric Research wrote.



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IBC had a close call with a critical vulnerability

Jack Kubinec

DYdX Chain, the blockchain built to house the perpetual futures exchange dYdX, experienced a “major outage” beginning early Monday morning. DYdX said the chain halt was caused by a scheduled v4 upgrade to the chain.



After nearly nine hours of downtime, dYdX <a href="https://status.dydx.trade/">released</a> a fix for the software bug, and enough validators got on board that dYdX resumed block production midday Monday. All-told, the outage lasted nine hours and 32 minutes, according to dYdX’s status <a href="https://status.dydx.trade/">page</a>.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/dydx">DYdX</a> said the fix is not a state-breaking change, meaning that the software’s compatibility with earlier versions of the blockchain will be preserved. DYdX’s perpetual futures DEX remained operational throughout the chain halt.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-downtime-post-mortem">Solana outage caused by a previously identified bug, devs say</a>



The chain halted because the wrong version of a bug fix in Cosmos’ IAVL <a href="https://github.com/cosmos/iavl">library</a> was included in the dYdX software release. This caused a corruption in the network’s state during the upgrade, Dimitar Petkov, the DeFi technical project lead in dYdX’s Operations subDAO, told Blockworks.



With the halt, dYdX becomes the latest blockchain to experience disruption in recent weeks, joining Solana and Polygon zkEVM.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polygon-zkevm-post-mortem">Polygon unpacks zkEVM outage and &#8217;emergency&#8217; upgrade</a>



Strangely enough, the price of dYdX’s native token (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/dydx">DYDX</a>) climbed after the chain halt began at around 3:00 am ET Monday — seeing about a 4% bump overall.



DYdX Chain’s v4 upgrade <a href="https://dydx.forum/t/dydx-chain-protocol-v4-0-upgrade-proposal-is-live/2552">made</a> some minor updates to the trading platform and introduced a means for malicious validators to be slashed via governance vote. It <a href="https://www.mintscan.io/dydx/proposals/46">passed</a> in a nearly-unanimous community vote last week. The upgrade’s “scheduled maintenance report” <a href="https://status.dydx.trade/incidents/s47nd82txjqq">acknowledged</a> the possibility that a disruption could be caused by v4.&nbsp;



The Cosmos-built dYdX chain is an app-chain, or a blockchain built to support a specific application — in this case, dYdX’s derivatives platform. The chain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dydx-staking-goes-live">entered its beta stage</a> in November and began allowing liquid <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/staking">staking</a> for its native dYdX token in January.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dydx-chain-liquid-staking">Liquid staking is now live on dYdX chain</a>



DYdX passed a <a href="https://www.mintscan.io/dydx/proposals/44">proposal</a> in March to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dydx-community-vote-staking">stake 20 million dYdX from its treasury</a> — worth around $64 million at current prices — with Cosmos liquid staking platform Stride.



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dYdX Chain resumes block production after 9.5 hour halt

Avalanche’s C-Chain stopped producing blocks at around 6:30 am ET Friday, due to a client code bug, developers have learned. The network resumed normal operations roughly 5 hours later.



Most transactions on the network take place on the C-Chain, however some subnets were also affected since all validators are required to process C-Chain transactions.



In an <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinsekniqi/status/1761012545131774099?s=20">X post</a>, Ava Labs co-founder Kevin Sekniqi attributed the likely cause to “a gossip-related mempool management bug, which is purely a code-related bug, and not an issue with performance handling,” meaning the outage was not related to a spike in usage of the network.



The initial working theory was that it was an “edge case” related to inscriptions.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Investigating Avalanche primary network block production issue right now. Seems to be related to a new inscription wave launched about an hour ago.&mdash; Kevin Sekniqi 🔺 (@kevinsekniqi) <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinsekniqi/status/1761003218836873728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 23, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Shortly after the outage began, Avalanche’s network <a href="https://status.avax.network/">status</a> page reported that “developers across the community are currently investigating.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avalanche">Avalanche</a> validator operators have been in the process of upgrading their node software to a new version that would bring a major upgrade called Durango online.



The upgrade is <a href="https://www.avax.network/blog/durango-avalanche-warp-messaging-comes-to-the-evm">expected</a> to activate on March 6, 2024, and as of the time of the outage, roughly 17% of the 1,838 network validators were already running the new client production code version 1.11.0, according to data provider <a href="https://snowpeer.io/">snowpeer.io</a>.



That release of AvalancheGo was published on Wednesday, but it’s not thought to be the cause, according to Sekniqi.



&#8220;I do not think it is related to v1.11, it just seems to have hit an edge case in mempool processing,&#8221; Sekniqi told Blockworks. &#8220;The bug hit majority of nodes, it seems.&#8221;



By 11:00 am ET, Ava Labs engineering vice president reported the bug had been identified, <a href="https://x.com/_patrickogrady/status/1761057598143643696?s=20">writing</a> on X that it resulted from “logic added in v1.10.18 that lead to validators sending an excessive amount of gossip to each other.”



Validators are encouraged to update to a newly released version 1.11.1. Over a quarter of the network had done so by 11:45 am ET, while the percentage of validators running the buggy version dipped to 19%, allowing the network to come back online snowpeer.io showed.



Subnet validators currently must also validate the C-Chain, which is why the outage also affected subnets, although this architecture is slated to change. That can’t come soon enough according to Avalanche director Omer Demirel.



“Today&#8217;s outage is a good example of why we need ACP-13 (Subnet-Only Validators), which will improve the Avalanche network&#8217;s fault tolerance by relieving subnets from primary network validation duty,” Demirel <a href="https://x.com/demirelo/status/1761021411886330266?s=20">posted</a> to X.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Today&#39;s outage is a good example of why we need ACP-13 (Subnet-Only Validators), which will improve the Avalanche network&#39;s fault tolerance by relieving subnets from primary network validation duty. Details for the curious: <a href="https://t.co/BzOU5Bjuzr">https://t.co/BzOU5Bjuzr</a>&mdash; :omer (@demirelo) <a href="https://twitter.com/demirelo/status/1761021411886330266?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 23, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The outage bears resemblance to one that knocked Solana offline earlier this month.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-price-dips-outage-restart">Solana price dips as outage requires a network restart</a>



In that instance, a software patch followed by a coordinated restart was required before service was restored several hours later.



According to community manager Leandro Matos on the Avalanche Discord, the outage is unusual. “The chain only had one minor outage since 2020 which lasted a few minutes,” he said.



Avalanche’s native currency AVAX as down 3.2% on the day to around $35.60 as of 11:30 am ET.



Updated Feb. 23, 2024 at 8:38, 9:24, 10:27 and 11:32 am ET with additional context and 11:46 am ET revising the headline.



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Avalanche operational again after 5 hour outage

Shalini Nagarajan

A security flaw was detected in the Libbitcoin Explorer on Thursday.



The Libbitcoin Bitcoin Explorer is a command-line utility for Bitcoin-related operations, such as key generation and transaction management, eliminating the need for a full node.&nbsp;



It allows developers and proficient users to engage with the Bitcoin network.



On-chain experts mentioned on X (previously Twitter) that many crypto wallets utilize Libbitcoin Explorer for generating private key entropy.&nbsp;



Now, hackers appear to have discreetly siphoned funds across various blockchains.



“If you generated a wallet using Libbitcoin&#8217;s Bitcoin Explorer, including as described in the appendix to Mastering Bitcoin, your funds are at risk (or already stolen),” bitcoin technical writer David Harding said.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">If you generated a wallet using Libbitcoin&#39;s Bitcoin Explorer, including as described in the appendix to Mastering Bitcoin, your funds are at risk (or already stolen). Full details: <a href="https://t.co/Crlw63lUr4">https://t.co/Crlw63lUr4</a>&mdash; David A. Harding (@hrdng) <a href="https://twitter.com/hrdng/status/1689022029142560771?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Meanwhile, a crypto researcher from Johns Hopkins, Matthew Green, <a href="https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1689047993100410880">stated</a> that one should assume every crypto wallet has an entropy flaw.



Researchers Anton Livaja and Ryan Haywood, among others, on Wednesday <a href="https://milksad.info/index.html">highlighted the harm caused by a Libbitcoin vulnerability</a>, noting that malicious individuals found and exploited the flaw to siphon money from impacted wallets.



The researchers pointed out that &#8220;Mastering Bitcoin,&#8221; a guide for developers to understand bitcoin, suggests using a command called &#8220;bx seed&#8221; for wallet generation.&nbsp;



This command is used in the Libbitcoin Explorer to generate random numbers for Bitcoin wallet creation and is essential for ensuring wallet security.



But if the tool relies on a frail random number generator, wallet security could plummet from robust standards like 256-bit down to a mere 32-bit, the team said.



If an attacker matches a wallet, they can access its funds and transaction history, regardless of whether the wallet is securely kept offline. The team believes that wallets created with this tool have been compromised and emptied.



The Libbitcoin team <a href="https://twitter.com/n1ckler/status/1689026658408259585?s=20">disputes</a> the findings.



According to the researchers’ findings, the primary theft took place around July 12, 2023, but initial breaches likely started on a smaller scale in May 2023.



Another related vulnerability in different wallet software was identified in November 2022 and quickly exploited, possibly setting the stage for this recent incident.



Github activity for libbitcoin halted around the time the first suspected bug exploit occurred on the mainnet, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/niftynei/status/1689435739409248256">one developer</a> with a substantial following.



The team hasn’t determined who is responsible for the continuous thefts from compromised wallets.



A list of wallets potentially affected by the vulnerability was not immediately available, however <a href="https://twitter.com/tayvano_/status/1689599497616388096">according to</a> MataMask&#8217;s Taylor Monahan, popular wallets such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/metamask">MetaMask</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ledger">Ledger </a>and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/trezor">Trezor</a> are not affected.



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Researchers flag security concern for users of certain crypto wallets

Sebastian Sinclair

Leading multi-party computation wallet providers, including Coinbase, Binance and ZenGo, have patched critical vulnerabilities discovered in widely used cryptographic protocols, potentially affecting millions of users.



Dubbed BitForge, the vulnerabilities identified and unveiled by the Fireblocks Cryptography Research Team on Wednesday could have allowed attackers to steal private keys from users&#8217; wallets.



The disclosed vulnerabilities “effectively downgrade the protection offered by the MPC system to that of a conventional single key system,” Idan Ofrat, co-founder and chief product officer at Fireblocks told Blockworks.



GG-18 and GG-20 protocols were found to be vulnerable at the pseudocode level — the inherent design or logic of the protocols — enabling attackers to exploit the flaw by exfiltrating the full private key, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/fireblocks">Fireblocks</a> spokesperson said.



In simpler terms, it&#8217;s like having a flaw in the blueprint of a building. Even if you build the structure perfectly according to the blueprint, the flaw is inherent in the design itself.



“BitForge only impacts MPC wallet providers that utilize the GG-18, GG-20, and Lindell17 protocols,” the spokesperson said. “Even if another provider is using a different MPC [multi-party computation] protocol, it is important to ensure they undergo regular code audits and have the cryptography resources to immediately patch security vulnerabilities.”



Some implementations required just 16 signatures for key extraction, while others could have necessitated as many as 1 billion. The Lindell17 vulnerability, on the other hand, emerged from wallet providers deviating from the protocol&#8217;s academic paper, which has since been updated.&nbsp;



The vulnerability created a backdoor for attackers to expose part of the private key when signing fails, Fireblocks said. In 2020, the GG protocols were updated to patch an earlier vulnerability, but these modifications inadvertently created additional flaws.&nbsp;



Fireblocks is advising all providers implementing these protocols to include required zero-knowledge proofs to enhance security. Users can check their exposure status through the BitForge Status Tracker.



While major players like Coinbase have resolved the vulnerabilities, the risk to smaller providers underscores the need to consult security experts to stay a step ahead, Fireblocks co-founder and CTO Pavel Berengoltz said.



“In cybersecurity, It is a common protocol for security researchers to provide information about a vulnerability they discovered to affected vendors privately and give the vendors 90 days to fix the vulnerability prior to disclosing it to the general public,” Ofrat said. “This allows the vendor ample time to mitigate the vulnerability while also making sure that security issues are eventually published for the public good to advance the entire ecosystem forward.”



Fireblocks identified 16 affected providers and open-source libraries but refrained from publicly naming the companies, emphasizing industry collaboration and providing a chance for fixes.&nbsp;



&#8220;As GG-18, GG-20, and Lindell17 are some of the most popular MPC protocols used by wallet providers, we wanted to provide users with the ability to find out whether they are currently impacted by BitForge,&#8221; the spokesperson said.



Ofrat recommends that wallet users check with their providers or consult Fireblocks’ <a href="http://www.fireblocks.com/BitForge">BitForge Status Tracker</a> to see if their wallet may be affected.



James Cirrone contributed reporting.



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Crypto wallets patch zero-day vulnerabilities to safeguard user funds

Curve Finance is offering a bounty of $1.85 million to anyone who can assist in identifying the person responsible for exploiting their protocol, in a manner that could culminate in a lawful conviction in court.



“If the exploiter chooses to return the funds in full, we will not pursue this further,” the team behind the DeFi protocol said on Aug. 6.



On July 30, the DeFI protocol <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/curve-suffers-exploit">fell victim to a software bug</a>, resulting in the loss of more than $70 million in various digital assets.



One or more attackers took advantage of vulnerable versions of a programming language known as Vyper, using them to perform <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/attack-defi-bug-curve">re-entrancy attacks</a> on select Curve liquidity pools.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The deadline for the CRV/ETH exploiter passes<a href="https://t.co/VphQ0bfYr2">https://t.co/VphQ0bfYr2</a> <a href="https://t.co/x8LP9Tx4rs">pic.twitter.com/x8LP9Tx4rs</a>&mdash; Curve Finance (@CurveFinance) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurveFinance/status/1688221472815284224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 6, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Curve is seen as the most structurally significant decentralized exchange in the DeFi landscape, with liquidity of $3 billion. Its importance particularly resonates in the stablecoin swap markets — an area that remained unaffected during these incidents.



On Aug. 3, Curve and other protocols impacted by the breach <a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc45e47f6e7d3e74763032e2fb991fa9a003d8ed55c13c93c6a5368ff322d7742" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proposed</a> a 10% bug bounty to the infiltrator, amounting to over $6 million. 



Some of the misappropriated assets were subsequently returned to <a href="https://twitter.com/AlchemixFi/status/1687921557417377793" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alchemix</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/JPEGd_69/status/1687594063527038976" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">JPEGd</a>, but not the other impacted pools.



According to <a href="https://twitter.com/PeckShieldAlert/status/1688404426825117697" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">PeckShield</a>, 73% of stolen funds (worth about $52.3 million) have been returned as of Monday.



Following the incident, the attacker issued an <a href="https://etherscan.io/tx/0x23c4799784c91023204bd68a94ec7a963486f2485dc43c13d8b804d5301b8041" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on-chain message</a>, maintaining that their decision to return the stolen assets was motivated by a desire not to inflict additional damage on the involved projects.



“I saw some ridiculous views, so i want to clarify that I&#8217;m refunding you not because you can find me, it&#8217;s because I don&#8217;t want to ruin your project, maybe it&#8217;s a lot of money for a lot of people, but not for me, I&#8217;m smarter than all of you,” the exploiter wrote in an on-chain message.



Curve’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/crv" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CRV</a> governance token is down over 6% in the last seven days, and was last trading at $0.61. Post the attack, it briefly plummeted below $0.50, amid fears that CRV collateral used on DeFi lending platforms <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/curve-egorov-exit-defi-positions">could be liquidated</a> en masse.



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Curve Finance offers $1.85M reward to identify attacker

<div id="highlights-block_6311a9bd99762" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Georgia-based traders told Blockworks they could sell crypto on Coinbase for 100 times their value elsewhere</li>
 <li>They&#8217;ve since had their bank accounts blocked as well as associated Visa debit cards</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Coinbase is seeking to clawback funds from bank accounts after discovering swathes of traders in Georgia had cashed out crypto for 100 times the intended market rate.



Coinbase users across the European nation were able to exploit an erroneous foreign exchange rate on crypto pairs denominated in the Georgian Lari (GEL), according to one source familiar with the matter and several Georgian traders who spoke to Blockworks under condition of anonymity.



A snafu at a third party provider led to an outsized exchange rate due to a misplaced decimal point for up to seven hours. This allowed no more than 900 Georgia-based traders to sell various crypto for GEL, and, in some cases, net thousands of dollars more than should’ve been allowed.



“In late August, prices for cryptos denominated in Georgia’s national currency had been rated at GEL 290 instead of GEL 2.90. The missed decimal point had been due to a &#8216;third-party technical issue,'&#8221; a Coinbase spokesperson told Blockworks.



Some trades, which should’ve netted around $150, were executed on Coinbase for $15,000, with proceeds withdrawn to personal bank accounts, users told Blockworks.



The average salary in Georgia is around $4,200 per year, meaning certain Coinbase users profited more than three times their national average. Estimates from a Georgian trading community that Blockworks spoke to places losses for Coinbase between $14 million and $140 million, although Coinbase refuted that claim.



Shortly after withdrawing related funds from Coinbase, Georgians said they received notification from their financial institutions advising them their bank accounts and associated Visa debit cards had been frozen.



“Hello, we have marked your transactions with Coinbase as suspicious and we’re locking all your accounts and cards,” one bank’s blanket text message to customers reads. “Please be aware that Coinbase may request clawback of the funds. Sorry.&#8221;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="630" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-29987" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=418 418w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=424 424w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=356 356w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=50 50w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pasted-image-0-1024x630.jpeg?w=1104 1104w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Image shows trader sold five lots of 0.01 ETH ($15.25) for 4,272 GEL ($1,525) each on August 30</figcaption></figure>



At least two domestic banks are said to have been involved in the freezing of funds, though not at the direction of Coinbase, one source close to the matter said. One local bank declined to comment, citing Georgian privacy laws.



“A very small number of users (0.001% of our total users) were able to erroneously trade and withdraw a small non-material amount of funds,” a Coinbase spokesperson wrote to Blockworks in an email. “Upon detection, we fixed the issue and are taking action to retrieve the improperly withdrawn funds.”&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Coinbase traders in Georgia profited in multiple ways</h3>



Coinbase, a publicly listed exchange incorporated in Delaware, reserves the right to clawback or reverse transactions found to have been paid out in error, according to its terms of service as laid out in its <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/united_states" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">User Agreement</a>.&nbsp;



But funds unrelated to the trades have also been frozen, meaning traders have now found it impossible to buy groceries and pay rent with their non-crypto related income, they said.



Georgia, which borders on Russia to the north and Turkey to the south, is not currently featured on Coinbase’s <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/places" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">list of supported countries</a> which details how users can engage with their platform. Coinbase told Blockworks it would provide a full list of supported countries though, as of press time, it has not yet been received.



The <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/lawmakers-probe-coinbase-binance-ftx-over-crypto-fraud/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">crypto exchange,</a> one of the most-used in the world, also has three tiered levels of trading restrictions with level one the most restrictive for users. That only allows for a person to send and receive crypto to their Coinbase wallet once a phone number has been verified for Know-Your-Customer (KYC) purposes.



Level two access, meanwhile, allows users to purchase crypto only after they have supplied a valid photo ID, such as a passport or driver’s license. Level three lets users send and receive crypto on the blockchain and requires users to verify personal information including proof of address, per Coinbase’s <a href="https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/managing-my-account/verify-my-identity/eu-verification-levels-faq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>.



According to one of the traders Blockworks spoke to, fiat deposits are currently not allowed in Georgia, though transfers, sending and receiving crypto as well as fiat withdrawals are.&nbsp;



Traders explained that methods of profiting from the price bug ranged from arbitrage between exchanges — transferring crypto purchased on another platform before selling it via Coinbase for 100 times profit — to simply selling crypto bought on Coinbase and withdrawing it in fiat.



“[There were] multiple levels of failure from Coinbase,” one of the Georgian traders said. “They had no checks. Even worse, when they detected unusual activity, which they should have detected, they failed to act on it for over seven hours.”



David Canellis contributed reporting.



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